Pulse Monitoring — Part 1
A device that collects and visualizes wrist-pulse data to support Traditional Chinese Medicine diagnosis, with a remote-diagnosis workflow.
- Research
- IoT
- BLE
- Android
- Node.js
Description
Together with Professor Chen-Hsiang Yu at WIT, we designed a device capable of collecting and visualizing wrist-pulse data to help Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners diagnose their patients. The project ran in three parts: the first focused on remote diagnosis, the second optimized that system, and the third was more data-analysis focused.
Background
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the diagnosing process uses three fingers — typically the index, middle, and ring finger — placed on the patient's wrist.
Design details
For the first implementation, we built a system that lets doctors diagnose patients remotely. Sensor values were gathered and published to any BLE-connected device using an Arduino Uno R3. On their mobile device, the patient could connect to the hardware for data gathering, contact the doctor, and let them control a 3D-printed device that applied different pressure levels at a pulse location. On the doctor's side, a mobile device connected to a remote web server over WebSocket to communicate with the patient and receive pulse data. After a session, doctors could persist the data in the server's database and return to it later.
Result
By the end of the project we had a working device and published our work at IEEE MIT URTC 2020, having pitched the idea in a Lightning Talk at IEEE MIT URTC 2019.